A Million Universes – Christman in a shopping mall

Nicole Alexandria

We’ve been getting to know each other for a little while now, so I don’t think it should really come as a surprise to anyone when I say I hate Christmas.

I hate Christmas with the passion of someone who worked in a shopping mall for four years. To pay my way through college, I worked in your friendly neighborhood nutrition store found in every mall across country. A large part of my day was spent either selling broken weight loss dreams, herbal remedies for erectile functioning or explaining to people how to pass a drug test. On the more fun occasions, I got to sell a super fun $80 b-vitamin powder called inositol which was only purchased by coke dealers looking to cut their product. With the long holiday hours, I studied or completed crossword puzzles.

If you find yourself reading this and asking yourself “Who hates Christmas?” I encourage you for fun to pick up a part-time job in retail and see if your soul isn’t crushed in less then a week. In addition to the mass suck of people in large herding groups on a normal day, the mall is kept warm to encourage people getting in and out as quickly as possible. Which works, however merchants have to deal with cranky people being made nauseous while carrying around heavy coats and waiting in long lines, which if you’re lucky doesn’t include any cranky uncomfortable children in dress up clothes who just had to sit on the lap of a pretentious douche bag dressed in red.

The Santa Claus in my particular mall was an entitled prick. He made more money in a matter of two months then I did in a year and walked around the mall demanding discounts and free items. The one and only time he came into my store he was surprised I hadn’t given him a bottle of water free, and asked to see my manager, who happened to be an old drunk who enjoyed the fact that I had breasts and would have backed me up on basic bitterness principle alone. Old Jolly Saint Nick from that point forward would pass by my store and glare and I smiled coyly while sitting in the massage chair supposedly set up for customers to try. No one ever actually bought the massage chairs because you could walk 25 feet to the nearest department store and buy them for $50 less, so I had free reign for hours.

Being lucky enough to have an abnormal retail boss who was more sour than I was, I was able to fuck with customers out of boredom from time to time. I did well enough selling things to people simply because I was cute and able to sound like I knew what I was talking about, so when I pissed someone off I was far above anywhere I was supposed to be in commissions, so no one cared. One great day in the holiday season, I was a victim of anti-semitism, despite being raised by Catholic. There is a sect of pretentious fuckheads who like to correct store clerks who for very obvious reasons need to remain impartial out of fear of pissing anyone off when they say “Happy Holidays,” because nothing says Happy Birthday Jesus like sweet sweet holiday judgement. When I was corrected by a particularly bitchy customer one fine evening who stated it was Christmas and not the Holidays, I replied, “Well … I celebrate all the holidays even Hanukkah sooo …” she replied, “Figures you would be a Jew” just before rolling her eyes and walking out.

Although I haven’t worked in a mall for quite a few years at this point, my holiday hatred persists. This season appeared to be one of the worst yet. The great blockbuster we have to look forward to being bombarded with concerns teenagers doing what they do best: whine. And pretend their love problems are the end of the world. While being glittery vampires or some other crap. To make matters worse, the most obnoxiously banged teenager of our time recorded an album of the most obnoxious music in the world: Christmas Carols.

I haven’t believed in Santa Claus for almost twenty five years at this point, but there are two things I really want for Christmas this year. I promise I will be a good girl and I will reconsider my anti-Christmas stance forever.

The first thing I want is for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to actually be a great movie. I have never been so concerned with a book being made into a movie before. The book is pretty life changing. If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor. If you don’t like it stop reading this column and re-evaluate your life. The people cast in the big screen adaptation is troublesome because anytime you have mainstream actors, the names could very likely overshadow the story line. The genius of the movie production of Jonathon Safran Foer’s other novel Everything Is Illuminated is that it cast lesser known actors who actually fit the parts. Eugene Hutz was the perfect Alex. There hasn’t been such genius casting since John Cusack and Jack Black in High Fidelity, who perfectly personify exactly who you picture when you’re reading the story. But they could have very easily sold out and cast Sasha Baron Cohen who would have ruined the entire movie. Thankfully he was probably off harassing Pamela Anderson as Borat at the time. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I only pray we see acting Tom Hanks of Philadelphia fame and not the Da Vinci Code. Or John Goodman throw himself into the role like he did in The Big Lebowski and not the Blues Brothers. And Sandra Bullock of Crash and not The Proposal. Maybe there is hope for Hollywood after all.

The second thing I want this Christmas, is for Justin Bieber to be the father. I would never be so happy with someone being knocked off his high horse. All I can picture is Will Smith expressing his disappointment publicly. His girlfriend slapping him and knocking his bangs out of place. He really has it coming for the Christmas album alone.

If these two things happen, I swear my Grinch of a Christmas Heart will grow three whole sizes.

Nicole Alexandria is off doing cool things like a boss that you probably never heard of while not giving a single fuck all day every day. You can contact her through Facebook.